


The Pirate

by Nelkitty



Category: The Highwayman - Alfred Noyes
Genre: AU, Everybody Lives, F/F, Happy Ending, If I should have tagged something and haven't let me know, Mary Sue, My First Fanfic, OH GOD WHY, Pirates, These characters exist in godmode, Vague mention of burns, Vague mention of scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 00:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17538917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelkitty/pseuds/Nelkitty
Summary: An AU of The Highwayman with a happy ending, everyone lives, and lesbians. Simple enough.





	The Pirate

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this because Annawry insisted and oh man I am dying of anxiety.  
> I know you're not supposed to apologise for terrible works but oh man  
> Oh man I'm just  
> Sorry
> 
> I wrote this back in 2014 for an assignment and glanced over it to do some vague editing before posting it but the uh, 'quality' remains unchanged.  
> It was originally 'published' on Smashwords as part of the assignment.  
> It's so much happier than I've written in the years since. Pure sugar. I hope you like it more than I do. I also hope the formatting works.

Far away in the cosy town of Ne’er You Mind, the first of the autumn winds rolled in, licked by ocean waves in the harbour. Each gust lifted lost pages from the nooks of alleys, stole pretty white underthings from drying-lines and coaxed lonely old men to pull their coats about themselves, tight against the cold. The trees danced along the ribbons of cobblestone roads, lit by a full moon that drifted hazily behind lazy clouds. The town’s residents slept peacefully, their doors bolted, their curtains drawn over the lightening sky. All stood quiet. All save a rickety building: The One-Eyed Wench, a salt-flecked inn by the harbour. There, in one lonely window, flickered a candle. It cast its light into the cold night, warm and welcoming. It was toward that light that the Highwayman sailed. 

By way of pirate ships, The Highwayman was unique. Small, but fast, she was the only ship of pirates who pirated the pirates themselves. Striking fast and fearsome, skull-and-crossbones snapping against the sky, her crew took ships in the night and left behind only floating debris come morning. The Highwayman would sail a little lower in the waves, laden with gold and prisoners. During the warmer seasons- when sea-trade was rich- they would roam the seas a barnacled scavenger, following roving pirate crews on their violent raids and then striking through the night. Their bounty they would bring with them when the colder winds blew and they returned home to Ne’er You Mind, the birthplace of their fiery captain Annabelle. 

This time, as the ship pulled into the harbour, the crew remained eerily silent, going about their work without a word as the ship groaned and creaked beneath them. Annabelle oversaw the unloading of their cargo to the wooden jetty below, and accompanied it up to the town, her face grim beneath her French cocked-hat. The wind picked up her dry gold curls and tossed them about her face, catching on the bunch of elegant lace at her throat. She straightened her coat- claret velvet, her very best- more than once, agitated, and scratched at the edges of her new thigh-high leather boots. Unlike the ladies of the town she wore soft brown doe-skin breeches. Skirts were too hard to fight in on the high seas. Leather provided good comfort on land but today in particular she wanted to look her best, for she bore bad news, and the townsfolk took a particular offense to pirates who actually looked like pirates. They were thankful for the protection and income The Highwayman provided, but preferred not think of how it was obtained. She’d even left her eyepatch and rapier in her cabin, though her pistols still glittered on her hips. Better safe than sorry. 

Trying the door to the inn and finding it locked, Annabelle rummaged in the alley between the stables and the side wall for loose cobbles, rolling the tiny rocks between her fingers as she counted the windows overhead. She tossed them, one by one, at the third window from the candle. She whistled to the alleycats, and tested the shutters. All locked and barred, immovable, and desperately in need of a good sanding and a new coat of paint. Somewhere down the road the town knocker had begun work, tapping on windows with his stick. Annabelle envied him the stick. Her pebbles seemed ineffective. 

“Psst!” She hissed, tossing another pebble, her voice low. “Bess! Bess! Wake up!” 

The window remained closed, but a rattling came from inside: A key within a lock. The inn’s front door opened with a reluctant creak, shards of old white paint falling from greasy, rusted hinges. From it stepped Bess, the landlord’s daughter, hastily weaving a dark red ribbon through her long black hair. She danced barefoot along the road to join Annabelle in the alley, giddy and giggling, throwing her arms around the Captain’s shoulders. Annabelle stumbled under Bess’ weight, but laughed quietly into her hair, holding her close. 

“I missed you. What are you doing throwing stones at the windows? Father would be furious if you woke him early.” Peppering Annabelle’s face with kisses, Bess huddled close, beginning to shiver with cold. “Besides, Tim is being a right tit these days. Don’t wake him up, he’s impossible to get rid of if he catches you near the stable.” 

“The ostler? I thought your father sent him to your uncle?” Annabelle tucked Bess’ trembling hands beneath her coat, glancing back to the Highwayman. It still bustled with her crew. “Good gods you’re freezing, what possessed you to come out in your nightgown? Come, let’s go inside.”

***

As the sun rose, painting the town lilac, and then gold, and then finally restoring to it the sea-washed clear white so common to seaside towns, the people of Ne’er You Mind roused to greet the day. They opened their shop doors and set out their wares: the greengrocer took up his yelling early, and soon the fishmongers joined him, hawking yesterday’s catch before the new one rolled in. Paper boys dashed back and forth with cigarettes hanging loosely from their lips and paper stacks heavier than themselves grasped in their tiny, dirty hands. The arrival of the Highwayman had not gone unnoticed: crowds bustled around the crew as they transferred the loot from ship to shore, answering as many questions as they could between crates.  
Only the inn lay still and silent, the candle gone from the window, doors locked tight against the early day. Only Tim the ostler gave it some life- pressed greasily against the wall, peering sideways through the window- eavesdropping as the horses went untended and the stable wickets creaked with warmth.

That Tim was madly in love with Bess was common knowledge. Common enough, that is, to have become the town joke. What man so crazy-eyed as he, with his straw yellow hair and pale, peaked face, could hope to win the heart of his landlord’s red-lipped daughter? What man could steal her heart from so exciting a woman as Captain Annabelle? The town’s giddy gossip did not go unheeded, and so Tim- increasingly paranoid- watched from the shadows and listened.  
“What do you mean you’re leaving already?” 

“Bess, please. It’s only for a short while and then I’ll be back again.” Annabelle, leaning casually against the hearth and staring into the flames, had her jacket clenched in one hand and a mug of ale in the other. She’d loosened the lace at her throat- or Bess had loosened it- and her hair now hung back from her face, tied into a lazy braid full of ribboned love-knots. Her tense demeanour did not lend itself to her suddenly girlish looks and her face, set with determination, seemed alien in the warmth of the inn. 

“There’s a small fleet of ships in the waters, a kind of... A kind of band of pirates. They call themselves King George’s Men and wear velvet coats, as though they were royal guards themselves.” Sighing, she pressed her forehead against the cool ale mug. “They are dangerous and prolific. They were spotted recently off the shores nearby and I fear they’ve set their sights on our little bay here.” 

“So you intend to strike first.” The landlord nodded grimly, giving Bess’ shoulder an affectionate squeeze. He was a large, muscular man, shaped like the barrels he hefted from the basement every evening. Short but stout. “How do you know they aren’t royal guard? The red coats aren’t known for being the kindest folk.” 

“There are bounties for them from one end of the isle to the other. They are not the king’s men.” Turning, Annabelle set her mug down and gazed at Bess, who stared back in concern. “They have made a name for themselves by pillaging towns and other pirates alike. They are unnaturally cruel. They leave nothing but rubble in their wake.” 

“So... They do the very thing that you do?” Bess grumbled. She crossed her arms and frowned at the table, sullen, unmoved by Annabelle’s frustrated sigh. 

“Our loot comes only from pirates who enter our waters. You know that, Bess! We do not take from the innocent. We protect our town. This town. You.” Annabelle delved her fingers into Bess’ hair and stroked it lovingly, delivering a kiss to her forehead. Bess glanced up at her, indignant and troubled but already forgiving. Annabelle greeted the glance with a half-cocked smile. “I will be back again by tomorrow. Look for me at dawn, to the west. If the bastards give us trouble we’ll be home by nightfall at the latest. After that I swear, my bonny sweetheart, we’ll be in for the winter.” 

Bess nodded glumly. 

“I love you, Bess.” Annabelle prompted gently. 

“Love you too, Anna.” 

With an awkward hug and a brusque pat on the back, the landlord accompanied Annabelle to the door, his face drawn and pale. “I’ll pass your message on to the mayor. You’d best head out early if you want to head them off before they reach us.”  
A gust of sea air accompanied her out the door, and with that, she was gone.

***

Come the following morning, before the candle burned out, Bess watched from the window, heart fluttering beneath her breast. The waters outside lay dark and ominously still. Even the foam and wave caps were barely streaks of grey, falling upon distant rocks like old linen. No ships crested the horizon. They still wouldn’t long after the sun had risen.

Bess drifted through her duties in a miasma of nerves. She scolded Tim the ostler more than once for following her, and when he spilled a bucket of milk over her shoes she shooed him from the inn entirely, restricting him to the stables. The landlord did not share her worry, jovially greeting guests and assuring them as she walked by that the Great Captain Annabelle would return, safe and sound, after defending their cosy little town from deadly pirates. Bess didn’t share his enthusiasm. 

The bay remained empty of grand visitors until long after midday, when from out of a tawny sunset the silhouette of a ship finally drew close to shore. The great groaning bulk of it slid into the harbour in silence, slick black, stinking of tar and gunpowder. The crew all wore the same uniform- red velvet, brass-buttoned and thick with stains- and their black leather boots drummed the deck with a heavy, foreboding rhythm. They said no world to the landlord, drinking his ale instead, and jostled Tim the Ostler like an old friend. The thin little man laughed nervously at their jokes and told them stories on demand, his quavering voice lost in their noise. His hollow eyes never quite left Bess as she moved through the rank-smelling crowd, serving without a word. 

“That her?” The captain whispered, stroking his oily braid. Tim nodded, simpering. 

“Boys!” His voice a roar, the Captain stood tall, a great hairy mountain of a man, commanding the attention of his men as he waved a sausage-like finger in Bess’ direction. The girl stood frozen like a lamb, staring at him with startled doe-brown eyes. It didn’t occur to her to run. “Back to work! Take the girl, she comes with us.”

As Bess yelped and wriggled, trying to escape gloved and grasping hands, Tim the Ostler leapt to his feet and followed the Captain out of the inn, stuttering his pleas for Bess to be left behind. The captain ignored him, scowling, limping back towards his ship. Tim hovered around him like a fruit fly. Bess followed them, hopped along by a pair of pirates, her hands already looped with crude, rough rope. 

As they bound her to the mast of the ship, a musket pressed hard to her belly, Bess glared at the crew. She bit savagely at their hands as they worked a rancid cloth between her teeth. She growled like an angry cat and tossed within the ropes, struggling to break free. The crew made jokes that she’d been ‘all roughed up’ by the Pirate-Queen Annabelle, and that she was no more refined than a wild boar. They spoke of Annabelle as though she were a prize. She the hunted animal and Bess the bait. It infuriated her, but tight in the ropes, there was little she could do. 

Holding her head high and twisting her hands, she cast her gaze to the sky. Annabelle. _By midnight, home by midnight..._ The sun had long set. Tim hadn’t bedded down the horses, and lights still flickered in the town. There was time yet. Tim was still stumbling around the deck, begging the Captain for Bess’ safe return, the Captain’s open hostility still going unnoticed by the fumbling stable hand. 

“Who invited you onto my ship?” The Captain snarled, seizing him by his mop of hair, hefting him to the fore of the ship. “Who invited you onto my ship?!” 

“I- you-“ Tim stuttered and squirmed. The Captain’s hand was like rock against his scalp. “We had a deal!” He squealed. 

The Captain stopped and stared at him for a long while. 

Lifting Tim bodily over the edge of the ship, the Captain shook him and growled, “We don’t make deals with rats.”  
Bess winced at the smacking sound of Tim hitting the water below. The ship pulled out from the harbour to the sounds of his waterlogged gasping, and the silent horror of the town left behind.

***

The King’s Men had been planning this for some time. In true pirate style, the fleet that Annabelle had spoken of were decoys: a real fleet sailing under the name King George’s Men, but consisting of ragtags and follow-along crews. Old ships loaded with angry people and faulty guns, and very little gold. They’d been feeding on the confusion The Kings Men had fostered. To the townsfolk, The Kings Men, the royal guard, and King George’s Men all meant the same thing: armed men in red coats thieving from the coastal peasants. People terrified by rumour gave up their gold long before a cannon had to be fired- which worked in their favour, since none of their cannons fired straight anymore.

From what Bess gathered from the chattering of the crew, this decoy fleet would put up a fight but stood no chance against The Highwayman. They planned to use Annabelle’s own tactic against her. She would return, satisfied that King George’s Men were scattered to the seven seas, only to be surprised by a bigger, stronger ship. 

The ship itself, fondly and unoriginally referred to by the Captain as Blackbird, lingered dangerously close to the rocks just outside of the harbor. They had tarred its surfaces so thoroughly that Bess’ hair clung to the mast and her shoes made sounds like tearing paper when she moved, the crew’s boots so hard and coated in the stuff that they tapped and clicked as they walked. It was effective camouflage in the dark. The entire ship was flammable however, and so no flames were anywhere to be seen. 

The full moon lit the decks in glimmers of lavender, and as it reached its zenith overhead, the crew fell quiet. They hunkered down in the shadows, guns and cannons primed. Bess’ heart beat in her throat, as over the edge of the deck she could see (like a ribbon, the one she’d knotted for her beloved before she’d left!) the waters The Highwayman would ride. 

True to her word, Annabelle returned with the height of the moon, the long bow of her ship first to drift carefully through the rocks. The King’s Men had seen it too. The decks rustled with anticipation. Bess strained and tried to call, but the rag in her mouth stifled her voice. Besides, the crew on The Highwayman were calling and talking amongst themselves; they could never hear the voice of a lone girl behind the rocks.

Beneath the deck, the cannons creaked against their ropes as their handlers peered through their little windows, ready to fire. Bess twisted harder, reaching now, determined to warn Annabelle. Her fingers strained against the ropes until they were wet, whether with sweat or blood she didn’t know. Half of The Highwayman was visible now: only a little longer before they opened fire! Clenching her teeth, she pushed. 

One finger. One finger found it. One finger was enough. As the crew around her shuffled into positions, prepared to spring upon the unaware ship, Bess twitched her one lucky finger. 

The musket shot rang out clear against the night. 

The ruckus on board The Highwayman took on a tone of urgency and shock, their lanterns swinging to search the rocks, illuminating the glossy surface of the Blackbird and her red-coated crew. The cannon men below were blinded by the sudden light- their first round of cannons fired missed altogether! The Highwayman responded with their own barrage, and with better aim and better light, they shattered the Blackbird’s side like glass. Her crew fired upon The King’s Men with careful aim, sparking fires, knocking pirates from the deck into the water. 

As quickly as the fight had started, it was over. 

“Retreat!” The King’s Men scurried about the broken husk of their ship, turning about. It groaned and tipped against the rocks, grinding metal, splintering wood. It was going nowhere. Masts fell with a sickening groan as thick black smoke leapt to the sky, licked by voracious flames. Blackbird burned and floundered and The King’s Men burned and floundered with it. 

Satisfied that the ship would sink slowly enough that they could check on the town and rid it of any lingering pirates on land, The Highwayman drifted into harbor, Captain Annabelle swinging from a rope to the jetty before the ship had even ceased to move. The townsfolk had come out from their houses to watch the Blackbird burn, joyful. Every face, however sick with worry, beamed with relief. All but one.  
Annabelle said no word to the landlord. He didn’t need to tell her. 

With a cry of rage and anguish, she spun on her heel and leapt into the water, swimming as fast as she could to the wreck, climbing onto the rocks with rapier in hand. She fought swiftly through the dregs of the crew who dared stand against her, dispatching them mercilessly, and made it onto the burning husk of the ship just as her own crew made it to the rocks behind her. 

“Bess!” She cried. Smoke choked her, burned her eyes. “Bess!”

She could hear her voice. Faint, muffled, but there. Somewhere below deck. 

Using a rope that remained unburnt, she swung down to the cannon deck. There, she found Bess. She also found the captain, bloodied, choking, singed and dying, behind a lit cannon. 

It was the last blast that night, and the only one from the Blackbird that hit its mark.

***

Far away in the cosy town of Ne’er You Mind, the first of the autumn winds rolled in, licked by ocean waves in the harbour. Each gust lifted lost pages from the nooks of alleys, stole pretty white underthings from drying-lines and coaxed lonely old men to pull their coats about themselves, tight against the cold. The trees danced along the ribbons of cobblestone roads, lit by a full moon that drifted hazily behind lazy clouds. The town’s residents slept peacefully, their doors bolted, their curtains drawn over the lightening sky. All stood quiet, all save a rickety building: The One-Eyed Wench, a salt-flecked inn by the harbour. There, in one lonely window, flickered a candle. It cast its light into the cold night, warm and welcoming. It was toward that light that the Highwayman sailed.

The crew on board were silent. It had been a year, a year since that dreadful day when The King’s Men had come to their little town. The wreck could still be seen on a clear day, dashed against the jagged rocks, a warning to all other would-be intruders.  
The seas had been eerily quiet around Ne’er You Mind since then. This time, as they pulled into the harbor, the townsfolk gathered to greet them and help them unload their new trade- spices, treasures, and gold from adventuring- as the Captain limped up to the old inn. She could no longer walk down the alleyway to find loose cobblestones. Her peg leg got stuck in the little open holes. Instead, she tapped on the windows. She whispered at the door. 

The window remained closed, but a rattling came from inside: A key within a lock. The inn’s front door opened with a reluctant creak, shards of old white paint falling from greasy, rusted hinges. From it stepped Bess, the landlord’s daughter, hastily weaving a dark red ribbon through her long black hair. She danced to join Annabelle on the doorstep, giddy and giggling, throwing her arms around her shoulders. Annabelle stumbled under Bess’ weight, but laughed quietly into her hair, holding her close. 

“Candles now?” Annabelle whispered, stroking carefully the thick burn scars on Bess’ beautiful left cheek. She glowed with pride. “You’re doing so much better!” 

“Hush.” Bess smiled. She worked her hands under Annabelle’s coat. “Father will be angry if we wake him up this early.” 

“Good gods, you’re freezing!” Annabelle clasped Bess’ hands to her heart, and Bess only smiled wider. Around them the cold sea air whipped and crisped the town, bearing her low voice off to obscurity. “Let’s go inside.” 

“No, let’s not.” Bess sighed. She lifted Annabelle’s hands and kissed each rough knuckle, breathing in the scent of rope, salt, and leather. Her cheeks ached from smiling. “I find I rather like the cold these days.”


End file.
